THERE IS NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS EXCEPT FOR CHILD PROSTITUTION

I recently finished working at one of Britain's best-known celebrity magazines. I learned a lot during my year and a half at the showbiz coal face. I learned that not knowing about your subject matter will eventually get you exposed as a fraud. I learned that unless you really put the hours in and listen to all the Westlife albums in sequential order until you "get" them, your colleagues will see through you. They'll cast you out. A cuckoo in the nest. A paedophile on the bus.

Now free to cast aspersions about everyone I worked with and everything I worked on, I hereby present to you Five Completely True Things I Learned While Writing For A Celebrity Weekly.


Celebrities love the zoo

If ever you want to secure an exclusive, two-hour interview with a famous person you'll need to offer them a trip to the zoo. It's that simple. The showbiz carousel would have ground to a halt years ago were it not for zoo outings. Money, influence, copy approval, a cover line; these are all viable bargaining tools, but at the end of the day every celeb is desperate to go to the zoo. All the time. The number of contracts I saw being passed between lawyers and editors that simply had the word "zoo" at the top beggar's belief.

There's nothing "hot" about black people

Unless you work for a black-interest magazine (Source, Voice or Nintendo Power) sooner or later you'll have to come to terms with this simple fact of publishing. There's no room for your liberal race guilt in the cut-and-thrust world of celebrity journalism. If you're presented with a photograph of a famous black person and a famous white person you must put aside the woolly niceties and go with the former. A blurry camera phone image of a coke-bloated Mischa Barton? Yes please. What about this agency shot of upcoming African American superstar Ciara? No thanks. Try again when she's a little less black.

Make no mistake: you're a star too

A lot of people get antsy trying to define the line between "celebrity" and "writer who writes about celebrities". Well let me break it down for you. There is no line. As far as the magazine-buying public are concerned if you write about the stars you are a star. I remember turning up as a reporter to my first awards ceremony and being greeted by flash bulbs, screaming fans and more red carpet than a metaphor about Julianne Moore's vagina. All for me. It didn't make sense to me then. To be honest it doesn't make sense to me now. But I learned to ride the silver tiger. And I rode it across my very own dream rainbow.

The Jewish conspiracy is real

A lot of people will tell you Jews control the entertainment industry. A lot of people will tell you that the Jewish hand hovers above our beloved stars of stage and screen, controlling their every move like the eczema-afflicted appendage of a Hebrew puppet master. A lot of people will tell you that Jewish fixers pay off the Russian police so that when Duncan from Blue gets onto a crowded Moscow subway train wearing his bespoke "frotting shorts" no charges are brought against him. The people who say all of this are correct. The magazine which I worked for may not have had any Jewish people working in it or near it, but let's not fool ourselves: it was dancing to the wicked tune of the Semite. Elders of Zion? More like Elders of Lee Ryan (from Blue)!

Don't let the naysayers get you down

Sometimes being part of the showbiz inner-circle is lonely. A lot of "proper journalists" are going to turn their noses up at you when they discover that you swim through the septic tank of celebrity excreta for a living. Sometimes people who aren't even journalists will face you down in a nightclub and call you a "wretched symptom of all society's ills". And yes, bin men, tree surgeons and janitors will throw things at you and accuse you of having no purpose in life. Small children, too young to understand the true importance of celebrity journalism, may chase you out of your neighbourhood on scooters. Even your own mother is liable to kick you hard in the face so (in her words): "you can feel all my pain and shame". But remember: none of these people have had an awkward, halting phone conversation with Peter Andre! None of them know what it's like to ask the Sugababes about which member of JLS they fancy! If your friends and family reject you it's only because of jealousy. Prove to them that you're above it all by using Facebook solely to post photographs of yourself with celebrities. The comments left by people you went to school with and haven't seen for fifteen years will make some of the sadness go away.